I recently had the good fortune to visit the Italian food emporium Eataly in New York. The original store is in Torino, where I did my jr year abroad, so I knew of the store for a while and I couldn't wait to try the American store, being run by the Batali-Bastianich team. There is a roof-top beer garden with home brewed beers by Sam Calagione's Dog Fish Head brewery. There are 3 restaurants and a huge food store, with butchers, fish, a wine store and a school. There is a great cafe with pastries and gelato in the front. It is a fantastic place that everyone who loves food should visit.
It got me thinking about Italy and the way real Italians eat. There is an Italian paradox as well as a French one, you have to wonder how Italians eat pasta and bread all day and don't get fat. We have good family friends who live in Rome and Umbria and they recently visited us for a month. I had the chance to see their eating habits up close and it was very educational.
They eat three full meals a day. They sit down at the table and eat slowly, they enjoy their food. They don't read or text or watch tv when they eat. I don't think an Italian has ever eaten in the car. They eat everything, but they also cook everything, they don't buy prepared or processed food. Everything is whole and home cooked. They rarely eat out but when they do, they go to good restaurants and enjoy it. They aren't constantly stopping for a coffee. They think our constant stopping at Dunks and Starbucks is ridiculous. They don't eat between meals at all. They don't snack, they don't feel the need to crunch on something or have something to sip on ALL DAY LONG. They don't drink water/tea/soda all day. They use little or no garlic. They eat small portions. When I say small, I don't mean tiny, I mean normal portions, not huge american ones. They eat sugar, dairy and meat, but it is all whole and home made, nothing is processed. They have a short espresso every day after lunch and enjoy their conversation. I ate a bowl of miso soup one day at 11am because I had breakfast at 7 and I was starving and they looked at me like I was nuts. They don't eat a half pound of pasta per person like we do in Italian restaurants. They cook one pound for 5 adults and that's it. They don't have a cheat day or go out on cocktail benders because they eat all kinds of foods and drink wine every day so they don't feel deprived at the end of the week.
This is somewhat how my grandparents ate (minus the wine and espresso) and is how my mother cooked dinner at night when I was a kid and is what she does when she has dinner parties now. My husband wants me to "cook lite" and make sandwiches for dinner and it is hard for me to wrap my brain around that. I'm still trying to bridge the gap between "Italy Italian" ways of eating and making simple food for my family. Maybe we just need to move to Italy so my husband and kids come home for lunch every day and there are no chicken nuggets and frozen waffles at the grocery store and we have to eat pasta and a little bistecca for lunch.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
The highs and the lows of cooking
A week ago today I was honored to be spending the entire day cooking at the James Beard House in New York's Greenwich Village. The JB Foundation is located in his old home and it has been preserved as he had used it, in his honor. Chefs who are asked to cook there know that it is one of the great honors that can be bestowed on a chef and they prepare for it in earnest. The members of the foundation and the general public are the guests of honor on your appointed night and they are die-hard food and chef experts. I was asked to accompany a former colleague to help with his special dinner, and he had amassed a stellar group of chefs to help him execute his vision on this night. It was fun, an honor, and a privilege to be there. The menu was very specialized Piedmontese cusine and it was all delicious and beautiful. I was able to spend three days in New York by myself, making the rounds to the latest great food shops and restaurants and it was a great time. http://jamesbeard.org/index.php?q=events_beardhouse_022712
Re-entry back home was tough after living the life in New York for a few days. I got right back on the dinner schedule of blt night and taco night. Then my husband told me he is tired of our dinner routine and he wants me to make more salads for dinner, and at that, he just wants a small salad for dinner. We are going on vacation this week and then when we come home, I need to do a new dinner plan with shopping lists because I can't make three dinners anymore. One for me, a salad for him and then something for the kids. All of the family meal suggestion books don't work for us because my husband and kids are very picky and aren't going to eat "fun angel hair pasta with peas, mint and shrimp."
The more people I talk to about this, the more I hear that dinner time is a battle ground for many families. I'm thinking about discontinuing "dinner" at our house, or 86-ing it as they say in restaurants. Lunch is fine and so is breakfast. After years of ingraining in to me and my cousins the importance of cooking and "the family meal," my grandmother, later in life and after I was married and trying to make the right dinners for my husband, told me that it was "perfectly all right and perfectly nutritious to have a nice bowl of cold cereal for dinner." Information that would have been helpful when I first started dating my husband and I was making a huge effort to cook gourmet meals. When we were dating and first married, we were busy with work and I had a regular 5:45pm yoga class, I probably managed to cook a big gourmet dinner once or twice a week. After we had kids and I was home to cook gourmet every night, it eventually became too much for him and he wanted me to cut back and cook "light" and then very simply and now to just make small salads or small sandwiches. I really don't know how to cook light or over-simply because I spent years executing complicated dinners to go out hot and perfectly all at once in high end restaurants. It is simply not possible for me to make soup and salad for dinner. So I think dinner is over. We are going to have breakfast or lunch for "dinner" and see if that works.
I just paused writing to pick my son up from pre-school. I was talking after with a mom who just moved here to the Boston area from California. She is as sweet and nice as can be and we started to talk about summer vacation plans. She said she wants her first summer here to feature the quintessential New England vacation and she asked me about New Hampshire and Maine lake areas because they love lake vacations. I told her it was all beautiful and she wouldn't have a hard time finding a good place. She said, "all I care about is NOT cooking dinner every night. I do like to cook but I am so sick of my kids saying yuck every night when I feed them and I need a vacation from that."
Re-entry back home was tough after living the life in New York for a few days. I got right back on the dinner schedule of blt night and taco night. Then my husband told me he is tired of our dinner routine and he wants me to make more salads for dinner, and at that, he just wants a small salad for dinner. We are going on vacation this week and then when we come home, I need to do a new dinner plan with shopping lists because I can't make three dinners anymore. One for me, a salad for him and then something for the kids. All of the family meal suggestion books don't work for us because my husband and kids are very picky and aren't going to eat "fun angel hair pasta with peas, mint and shrimp."
The more people I talk to about this, the more I hear that dinner time is a battle ground for many families. I'm thinking about discontinuing "dinner" at our house, or 86-ing it as they say in restaurants. Lunch is fine and so is breakfast. After years of ingraining in to me and my cousins the importance of cooking and "the family meal," my grandmother, later in life and after I was married and trying to make the right dinners for my husband, told me that it was "perfectly all right and perfectly nutritious to have a nice bowl of cold cereal for dinner." Information that would have been helpful when I first started dating my husband and I was making a huge effort to cook gourmet meals. When we were dating and first married, we were busy with work and I had a regular 5:45pm yoga class, I probably managed to cook a big gourmet dinner once or twice a week. After we had kids and I was home to cook gourmet every night, it eventually became too much for him and he wanted me to cut back and cook "light" and then very simply and now to just make small salads or small sandwiches. I really don't know how to cook light or over-simply because I spent years executing complicated dinners to go out hot and perfectly all at once in high end restaurants. It is simply not possible for me to make soup and salad for dinner. So I think dinner is over. We are going to have breakfast or lunch for "dinner" and see if that works.
I just paused writing to pick my son up from pre-school. I was talking after with a mom who just moved here to the Boston area from California. She is as sweet and nice as can be and we started to talk about summer vacation plans. She said she wants her first summer here to feature the quintessential New England vacation and she asked me about New Hampshire and Maine lake areas because they love lake vacations. I told her it was all beautiful and she wouldn't have a hard time finding a good place. She said, "all I care about is NOT cooking dinner every night. I do like to cook but I am so sick of my kids saying yuck every night when I feed them and I need a vacation from that."
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